Year of Science promotes scientists' responsibility to educate

I was excited to hear of a
nationwide
Year of Science
initiative that starts off with a
Boston-based conference
in the first week of January. This conference will help people working
in the sciences learn how to educate the wider public about what they
do, why it's important, and what its implications are for public
policy.

I believe the conference focuses on small-scale public interventions
such as science fairs, weblogs, and cafes, but I'm sure it will also
talk about using the mainstream media (after all, one of the keynotes
is by Ira Flatow, host of of Science Friday) and influencing public
policy.

The year 2009 is an exciting one for science because the United States
has a new administration that seems to demonstrate a new respect for
what scientists can say to politicians. (For instance, actual
scientists are being appointed to scientific positions.) Furthermore,
an organizer of the Year of Science told me of some interesting
anniversaries in 2009:

The 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of the telescope, which
some people consider the beginning of science as we've understood it
for past several hundred years (although his work on falling bodies
may be a more direct example of the invention of experimental science)

The 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and the 150th anniversary of
the publication of his Origin of Species

The earnest efforts of scientists to explain themselves to the public,
reflects an interesting shift.

I've long had the impression that geneticists, astrophysicists,
etc. didn't like to call themselves "scientists." They'd say "I'm a
geneticist" or "I'm an astrophysicist" and distance themselves from
the enormous umbrella of "science." This tendency can be compared to a
Navaho or Cherokee who resists being called a "Native American" or
"American Indian"--who wants to be lumped together with people who are
very different?

But now scientists are becoming aware that they face indifference and
ignorance in very similar ways, and can benefit from dealing with the
problems as a group. And although I don't like to descend too deeply
into cynicism, I think eight years of being shoved down the plumbing
by the Bush administration has woken scientists up to the dangers
their disciplines face if the public doesn't appreciate what they have
to say.

When I went to college, the science departments in that school offered
no courses for students who wanted basic scientific literacy. Each
department had one mandate, and one only: to produce the next
generation of people to take permanent jobs in that field. They
started off each candidate with rigorous and time-consuming courses on
introductory topics that reflected little of what made their fields
exciting.

Of course, how many graduates would actually get full-time jobs in the
field? How much would the field have benefited from helping students
from other disciplines take a course or two that led them to understand
and support the role of these sciences in modern society? If my
college had helped me get the background I wanted, it might be getting
bigger contributions from me.

Luckily, universities are changing. They're loosening their views of
scientific fields through the necessity of cross-disciplinary courses
and collaboration. They're offering more basic courses for non-majors.
And after the Year of Science we'll all hopefully be further ahead.